by Cipher Muse
ciphermuse@yahoo.com
TITLE: Not a Moment, Not a Word
AUTHOR: Cipher Muse
FANDOM: Jurassic Park III
PAIRING: Alan/ Billy
RATING: R
ARCHIVE: Well, it's not really a story, is it? But if you want it,
I'm pretty easy. Could use a plot, several more pages, a beta, and a
couple of good sex scenes before public consumption.
FEEDBACK: Always, yes. ciphermuse@yahoo.com
DISCLAIMER: These dazzling tricks performed by the figments of
another's imagination. They smell better in mine, though.
Author's Notes: Um, this bit of blather may or may not lead to more.
For Pat, who sat through the film in stoic silence in spite of the
perils of a sore tummy.
Alan Grant forced himself to focus only on the present. After he and
the small family escaped the pterodactyls, all through the golden,
terrible afternoon, he planned and maneuvered to find safety for all
those who remained alive. While his strength remained, he kept his
horror at bay and steered them toward home as best he could. Now, at
last, they were on the boat, moving toward the ocean and a tiny hope
of rescue, and nothing remained to be done but stay vigilant. He
watched the sun setting with a stoic expression painted in the blood
and gold of fading light, and no tears were allowed to shine on his
face.
It was in the first moments of darkness that he remembered.
He remembered Billy's voice murmuring into his ear, raspy with the
tones of exhaustion. Remembered Billy's lean press against him, their
chests too close together while they stood beneath the incomplete
cover of forest. Remembered thighs meeting and surprising him with a
craving for contact.
Alan closed his eyes against the darkening forest, conjuring the
memory of the hunger in the young man's face, his own helpless gasp.
Billy, who smelled so sweetly of sweat and crushed leaves, had fallen
to his knees and pressed his lips against his mentor's swollen sex as
if he'd always known how welcome he would be there. Sunlight
filtering through the leaves above had painted them both pale green,
while pants were opened and sculpted cheeks were hollowed.
The ghostly vision shimmered and broke with Eric's tinny laughter. In
spite of the interruption, Alan felt wonder pierce his sore heart
that the child could still laugh. The sound almost made him believe
in redemption. But the hope flared and faded quickly, and memory
mocked the instant's folly.
He had pushed the young man away afterward, and not kindly. Too much,
too soon, he had said. The eyes had stayed wide and green, never
accusing. Not until the last few seconds before Billy Brennan tried
to fly, and succeeded well enough for a creature born without wings.
For a little while, at least.
The second time gliding into a cliff, Billy's luck had not held. The
fall into the water was miraculously easy, his plunge causing no
injury. But where heights couldn't destroy him, monsters from legend
had. The high pitched cries of the 'dactyls as they relentlessly
hounded their prey were still loud in Alan's mind. But Alan Grant
felt certain that his own words, spoken in anger had been more
responsible for that terrible death than the teeth and claws of the
flying reptiles.
"As far as I'm concerned, you're no better than the people that built
this place."
It might as well have been a shove off that cliff, to have spoken
such words to his student under such circumstances. And now they
would echo forever, nothing else he would say having the power to
silence them. He would speak hollow words over an empty grave, but
closure was something unlikely to come.
What if he had said those other words instead, the ones that he had
choked back time and again, of praise, of... love? Would he still be
part of a partnership with a vision, instead of floating alone into
the dark? Would that last look have spoken of trust, instead of
pleading for absolution?
The fears that had held his tongue before this disaster seemed now to
have the substance of a child's terror of the dark. Alan was too old,
the relationship was inappropriate, grant committees were notoriously
averse to same-sex relationships; all appeared to be trite notions
now, meaningless appeasements of his own cowardice. The attraction
had been so repressed that Alan had only known of his desire through
the inarguable language of dream. Morning after glorious and
embarrassing morning he had woken messy and sweating with Billy's
name on his lips. His sleeping brain had refused the pleasant fiction
of sexlessness the paleontologist's waking body bore quietly.
Frustration with himself boiled out of Alan in a rush of words, heard
only by the river and the now-steady rain.
"If I had a second chance, I would not waste a moment, not a word. I
would tell him everything."
It was what he truly believed.
~
< Much later >
"I rescued your hat." Billy's smile illuminated the plain military
craft.
Alan cleared his throat.
"Well, that's the important thing."
~
End.
